Victoria Eton mess sponge

I wanted to come up with something special for my blog’s second birthday and this is it! In the two years since I launched my alter ego on the world I haven’t made a Victoria sponge as I always default to my favourite sponge recipe.

While there’s nothing wrong with a classic Victoria sponge i.e. sponge filled with either jam and cream or buttercream, I wanted something with a little more pizzazz and more fitting for a dessert. Taking the classic Victoria sponge filling of strawberry and cream, I went one stage further and used Eton mess as a filling. Eton Mess is a classic dessert in its own right and comprises of strawberries, cream and crushed meringue.

The hidden crunch of the meringue in the creamy filling compliments the sponge perfectly and was a lovely mix of tastes and textures.

Don’t worry about having any leftover – keep it in the fridge and it stays just as delicious for a day or so. If you wish to keep it longer than that hang your head in shame and vow, right now, to increase your cake consumption!

Ingredients
For the sponges:
200g caster sugar
200g unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 eggs
200g self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons milk

For the Eton mess filling:
6 meringue nests, crushed (I used Marks & Spencer’s as they use only egg white and sugar i.e. just like if you’d made them yourself...which of course you could if you wanted!)
225g strawberries, washed and hulled
1 tablespoon icing sugar
300ml double cream

Method

- Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/375°F/Gas mark 5.

- Line the base of two 20cm round sandwich tins with baking paper.

- Place all the ingredients for the sponge into a bowl and beat together until smooth and well combined.

- Divide the mixture evenly between the tins and level the surfaces.

- Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out cleanly. Mine took 25 minutes.

- Leave to cool on a wire rack before turning out of the tins.

- While the sponges can be made in advance and stored in an airtight container, the Eton Mess filling can only be made when you need it.

- Blitz half the strawberries in a blender or processor to make puree.

- Stir in the icing sugar then pass the puree through a nylon sieve.

- Chop the remaining strawberries into small chunks.

- Whip the cream until you have soft peaks.

- Fold in the crushed meringues and the chopped strawberries, then fold in the puree.

- Place one sponge on a serving plate and cover with the Eton Mess. Don’t worry if you can’t use it all – simply spoon any leftovers into small glasses and you have a dessert for another meal!

- Top off with the second sponge.

- Dust with icing sugar, if desired.

- Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have made.

- Eat.

Summer fruits pavlova

Pavlovas are so easy to make that I feel almost guilty at how fantastic they look – everyone will think it has taken hours to create your masterpiece when, in reality, there is very little hands-on work.

My meringue cracked at little but it makes no difference to the flavour and I don’t think it spoils the look either:

There is something temptingly luscious about a big pavlova; the individual ones make it to the plate more beautifully but a big pavlova –requiring two hands to transport to the dining table - brings out far more greedy desires.

Slices are messy and the fruit and cream tumbles out onto the plate:


The combination of berries, so juicy, delicious and richly coloured at this time of year, contrasts wonderfully with the snowy meringue, particularly when the fruit juices mingle with the cream:


It’s such an easy to make crowd pleaser. I like my meringue crisp on the outside but soft and cloudlike inside:


I end with a plea: has anyone else had trouble with blogger during the past week? I've had lots of error messages when trying to upload photos - they all begin with a BX reference number, and when I have uploaded photos it won't let me click and drag them into position (i.e. scrolling down through my post); I have to move them down a screen at a time...which takes ages. Is it blogger or me? Any ideas? I know you're a clever bunch so throw myself on your mercy!

Ingredients:
For the meringue:
6 egg whites
375g caster sugar

For the custard cream:
600ml double cream
500ml good quality ready made custard

For the fruit:
I used a supermarket punnet each of raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and strawberries but couldn’t fit them all on.

How to make:
- Preheat the oven to 150°C/fan oven 130°C/300°F/Gas mark 2.
- Line a large flat baking sheet with baking paper.
- Whisk the eggs whites to the stiff peak stage then gradually whisk in the sugar until you have a thick, glossy meringue.
- Spoon the meringue onto the prepared baking sheet and shape into a bowl – the meringue is good natured and you can sculpt it quite easily.
- Bake for 40-50 minutes or until pale and crisp.
- Turn off the oven and leave the pavlova to cool in the oven with the door slightly open.
- When cold you can store overnight in an airtight container until needed.
- When ready to serve (don’t do this in advance or the meringue will go soggy) make the cream filling: whisk the cream until it is just about holding soft peaks, then whisk in the custard a spoonful at a time.
- Spoon the custard cream into the meringue case and top with fruit of your choice.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Cherry Meringue pies

After levelling the bases of my Christmas snowmen sponges I had some tasty looking offcuts!


We’re all being (rightly) encouraged to waste less food so I pondered how to use the leftover sponge. Raiding my store cupboard I found some tinned cherries, and, after making my custard tarts I had lots of leftover egg whites. At this point a lightbulb switched on in my brain and cherry meringue tarts were born!

I layered the cherries onto the sponge. Tinned cherries are lovely - a real success story; so often we think of tinned fruit as inferior to fresh, but I think these cherries are proof that it's not always true:


A layer of meringue and – voila!


They are beautiful and certainly don’t look like a creation borne of leftovers:



I was on a roll at this point; the creative juices were certainly flowing (it doesn’t happen very often so I enjoy it when it does!). I didn’t use all of the tinned cherries. Again, not wanting to waste them, I pureed them and served them with the pies as a fruit coulis:


Using up offcuts from other recipes never tasted so good:


This is the last of my Christmas posts – business as usual resumes next week!

Ingredients:
8 discs of Genoese sponge – for the recipe click here
2 tins of cherries
6 egg whites
375g caster sugar
½ teaspoon cornflour

How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 220°C/fan oven 200°C/425°F/Gas mark 7.
- On a baking sheet, lay out the cooked sponge discs.
- Place some cherries on top of each sponge. Don’t go right to the edge because you want the meringue to sit on the sponge.
- Put the egg whites and sugar in a bowl and whisk until the mixture turns thick and glossy. This will take quite a long time – mine took over 10 minutes.
- Whisk in the cornflour.
- Either pipe or simply spread the meringue over the cherries and sponge.
- Bake for 5-10 minutes or until the meringue is just starting to brown. Check after 5 minutes as the meringue can burn very quickly.
- Leave to cool on a wire rack before serving.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Mini pavlovas

I love meringue whether it’s the soft sort that tops pies and cupcakes or this – the crunchy kind. What has previously put me off making a pavlova is the amount of cooling time required in the oven – many of the recipes require the pavlova to be cooled in the oven, often overnight. That’s why this Nigella recipe caught my eye – the pavlovas are mini and this dramatically cuts the cooking and cooling time.


It’s impossible to make a pavlova look anything but decadent – they are the Miss Worlds of the cake world! Sweet, but light enough that you can eat loads, what’s not to love?

This tasted as delicious as it looks!


Here it is with the side off, so you can see the cream sitting in the meringue:


I topped mine with strawberries, raspberries and blackberries but any fruit would work. If the fruit is a little tart, this gives a lovely contrast to the ultra-sweet meringue as well as providing one of your five a day. One of the statements in the prior sentence was a lie – can you spot which one?


Ingredients:
8 egg whites
Pinch of salt
500g caster sugar
4 teaspoons cornflour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
750ml whipping cream
Fruit for topping – use whichever combination you like.

How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.
- Line three baking sheets with baking paper (I used non stick foil as I find it easier to remove the meringue from without breaking it) and draw 6 10cm circles on each sheet (I used a round biscuit cutter as my template). The meringues puff up on cooking so they need to be spaced apart.
- Whisk the egg whites and salt until the firm, but not stiff, peak stage.
- Gradually whisk in the sugar until the meringue is shiny then fold in the cornflour, vanilla and vinegar.
- Spoon the meringue onto the circles you have drawn on the baking paper and make the meringue bowl shaped as you need to be able to fill it later.
- Put in the oven and straightaway reduce the oven temperature to 150°C/fan oven 130°C/300°F/Gas mark 2.
- Bake for 30 minutes and then turn off the oven. Leave the meringues in the oven for a further 30 minutes before taking out and cooling on a wire rack. I had to do the baking process twice as my oven only has 2 shelves and the meringues take up 3 baking sheets! I put the third tray to one side (on a marble board) and it was fine.
- When all the meringues have cooled whip the cream until it is firm but not stiff. Spoon it into your little bowl shaped pavlovas.
- Top with your chosen fruit.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Blackberry and almond meringue sponge cake

This is a sandwich cake with a twist; the twist being that one of the cake layers is given a meringue topping which is baked at the same time as the cake. If that makes sense.

Here they are fresh from the oven. Bonus mark for spotting the one with meringue on:


The meringue is tall but cracked and sank a little as it cooled:


This cake could easily be a dessert or a tea time treat. While not as easy to make as a plain sponge sandwich, there’s nothing tricky to this cake yet it looks stunning when brought out on a serving plate or stand. Everyone will think you spent hours on it when, actually, there’s very little hands-on work.

The bottom layer is piled up with bramble jelly and, as I had some blackberries left over I added them. Here is the base, just waiting for some lovely cream:


It must be the strange weather we’ve had so far this summer i.e. lots of rain interspersed with sunshine but moderate temperatures, that is making the summer soft fruit so lovely. I think blackberries are the most gorgeous colour and I love it when you mix them into the sponge and they start to ooze their delicious reddish-purple juice into the cake!

The finished cake is a bit of a stunner. I love this photo as it looks like the two blackberries on the top at the front are about to have a fight and have armed themselves with almond swords! (the one on the left looks particularly "up for it"):


The combination of baked meringue and sponge isn’t one I’ve had before but is lovely – the crunch of the sugary meringue crust sinks into the soft sponge and the thick cream binds it all together. It is quite hard to cut because of all the different textures but however it ends up on the plate it will still taste delightful!





Ingredients:
For the cake:
200g unsalted butter, at room temperature
200g golden caster sugar
200g self raising flour
50g ground almonds
2 eggs, plus 2 additional egg yolks (save the whites for the meringue)
2-4 tablespoons milk
100g blackberries, washed and dried

For the meringue:
2 egg whites
100g golden caster sugar, plus 2 tablespoons extra for sprinkling on top
A handful of flaked almonds

For the filling:
200ml double cream, lightly whipped
4 tablespoons bramble jelly
Blackberries, for decoration

How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 160°C/fan oven 140°C/312°F/Gas mark 3.
- Grease two 20cm loose bottomed sandwich tins.
- Place all the cake ingredients into a bowl – except the blackberries – and beat until creamy and well combined. Stir in the blackberries.
- Spoon the mixture into the two tins and level the surfaces. Put to one side.
- Now make the meringue. Whisk the egg whites adding the sugar one tablespoon at a time. Whisk until thick and glossy.
- Gently spoon on top of one of the cakes and then sprinkle the additional sugar and the flaked almonds on top.
- Bake both cakes for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out cleanly from the cake without the meringue. Remove the meringue-free cake from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.
- The cake with the meringue will take longer to bake. The recipe stated a further 30 minutes, but I found mine only needed an additional 15 minutes. As soon as a skewer comes out cleanly, the cake is ready. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
- To serve, spread the bramble jelly over the plain cake and then spoon the lightly whipped cream on top. As I had some blackberries left over, I added them to the bramble jelly.
- Gently place the meringue sponge on top and scatter some blackberries over the meringue for decoration – this is optional.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Rhubarb meringue pie

I have always loved the concept of lemon meringue pie; it looks gorgeous - like a cloud has landed in a pie plate - and you get lots of different flavours and textures in a single slice. In fact, the only thing holding me back from forming a lifelong love affair with lemon meringue pie is the small matter of my lemon loathing. I may well have found the answer.


There’s no need to pipe the meringue but I’m obsessed with piping everything at the moment:



Rhubarb provides the same tart contrast as lemon does to the sweet sticky meringue and, as the CCD (Caked Crusader’s Da) had harvested the last of the summer’s rhubarb crop it seemed wrong to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Here’s the rhubarb waiting to be covered in a duvet of meringue:


Rhubarb, left to its own devices, is very tart – mouth puckeringly so. What interested me with this recipe was that you use a combination of sugar and orange juice to sweeten the rhubarb. The orange juice worked beautifully and seemed to bring out a delightful depth of flavour in the rhubarb. It was intriguing as the first ‘hit’ of flavour was the tart rhubarb then the sweet orange came through and left you with a fresh citrus taste.

The rhubarb filling sets very firm allowing lovely crisp slices to be cut:


I served it with thick cream, but in truth, it didn’t need it (believe me, this is not a comment I make lightly!).

Ingredients:
For the pastry:
173g plain flour
120g unsalted butter
3 tablespoons icing sugar
2 egg yolks - keep the whites for the meringue!
Plus, a further 2 egg yolks for sealing the pastry after baking blind – keep the whites for the meringue!

For the rhubarb filling:
675g rhubarb, chopped
75g caster sugar
Juice of 3 oranges (if you want to use bottle juice, this amounts to 250ml)
75g cornflour
1 egg yolk

For the meringue:
4 egg whites – saved from the stages above!
175g caster sugar

To serve: whipped cream

How to make:

- First make the pastry. Place the flour, icing sugar and butter in either a food processor or mixer and blend until the texture fine breadcrumbs.
- Add the egg yolks and mix until the dough comes together.
- Using your hands, make the dough into a smooth ball. Flatten slightly then wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/fan oven 180°C/400°F/Gas mark 6.
- Grease a 23cm fluted flan tin and then roll the pastry out and use to line the tin. I roll my pastry out between two sheets of baking paper as this eliminates the need to dust the surface with flour.
- Once in the tin, cover the pastry with either baking paper or non stick foil and weigh down with baking beans.
- Bake for 15 minutes, then remove the baking beans and paper and brush the pastry with the two beaten egg yolks. This will seal the pastry and stop it becoming soggy from the juicy rhubarb.
- Return the pastry, uncovered, to the oven for a further 15 minutes, or until the pastry is crisp and golden.
- Leave to cool on a wire rack.
- While the pastry is cooking, make the rhubarb filling. Put the chopped rhubarb in a large pan with the sugar. Cover the pan and cook on a low heat for five minutes. Then remove the lid and keep cooking until the rhubarb softens. Rhubarb collapses when it cooks and that’s what you’re aiming for – you don’t want any hard lumps left. Stir every now and again to encourage the rhubarb to break down.
- Mix the cornflour with the orange juice. Remove the rhubarb from the heat and stir in the orange juice/cornflour mixture.
- Return the pan to the heat and bring to the boil stirring all the time. This will thicken the rhubarb.
- When the rhubarb is at boiling point, cook it for a further 2 minutes then remove from the heat.
- Allow to cool slightly before beating in the egg yolk. If you do this straightaway the egg might scramble so be patient!
- Pour the rhubarb into the pastry case. You can make the dish up to this point the day before serving. Let the rhubarb cool in the pastry case then cover and chill. If you make the meringue the day before it might weep.
- Finally, make the meringue topping. Whisk the three egg whites until the soft peak stage.
- Preheat the oven to 150°C/fan oven 130°C/300°F/Gas mark 2
- Continue to whisk and add the sugar gradually until it is fully incorporated.
- Whisk until the stiff peak stage before spreading or piping over the rhubarb.
- Bake for 35-40 minutes until the meringue is crisp on the outside and golden brown.
- Serve either warm or at room temperature but definitely with cream!
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Tres Leches Cake (Three Milk)

I promise to always tell the truth about my baking and the truth here is that you should only make this cake if you have a lot of time to lavish on it. And I mean a lot. It is worth the effort though - in fact, it's a bit of a stunner and unlike anything you'll have had before.



This is not a ‘quick make’ as the cake requires time to soak up a mixture of milks and cream (hence the name of the cake). When I started basting the cake with the milk/cream solution I was very concerned that it wouldn’t absorb all the liquid. After about two hours less than half the liquid had found its way into the cake. Then, as a last resort, I flipped the cake. Voila! A one way ticket to speedy absorption. Therefore, my top tip is when you put the cake into a large tin to pour the milk/cream solution into it, ensure that you turn the cake upside down to how it was baked i.e. so the flattest surface, which was the bottom when baking, is now the top. This limits how much liquid rolls off the top and gives a much better surface for soaking.

When you take it out the oven, the cake will sink a little and shrivel. It was quite odd to see a plump sponge turn into the cake equivalent of a shar pei dog. But once you start soaking it, it plumps up again so fear not!

Here it is looking shar pei like before I flipped it:


And see how it looks flipped with all the liquid absorbed:


The thinking behind the cake is interesting: make a fat free sponge and then soak it in condensed milk, evaporated milk and cream. This gives a rich and moist finish that is out of this world and worth every minute lavished on it. It takes the idea of a rum baba and makes it more dairy focused (which can’t be a bad thing – remember we all need calcium for healthy bones!)

It’s very hard to describe the taste and texture – it’s dense in texture because of the liquid but not heavy. The best I can do is to say it tastes like vanilla ice cream in cake form. If making the meringue with boiling sugar syrup frightens you, this cake would also work with whipped cream.


Boiling the sugar syrup – the temperature’s not quite at the required level yet:


Ingredients:
For the cake:
6 eggs, separated
230g caster sugar
125ml milk (whole or semi skimmed)
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
290g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
395g tin condensed milk
375g tin evaporated milk
300ml single cream
3 tablespoons rum

For the meringue topping:
290g caster sugar
4 egg whites
½ teaspoon cream of tartar

How to make:

- Preheat oven to 170°C/fan oven 150°C/325°F/ Gas mark 3 and line a 22cm square tin with greaseproof paper.
- Beat the six egg yolks with all but 2 tablespoons of the sugar (put aside for the egg whites) until pale, thick and creamy. Don’t skimp on this stage or try to rush.
- Fold in the milk and one teaspoon of the vanilla extract.
- Fold in the flour and baking powder. Put the bowl to one side.
- In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until they appear frothy, then add the cream of tartar.
- Resume whisking until the whites start to peak, then add the sugar.
- Continue whisking until you have stiff glossy peaks.
- Stir a spoon of whites into the cake mix to slacken the mix.
- Carefully fold in the rest of the whites until the mix is just combined.
- Pour into the cake tin and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Mine took 45 minutes.
- Cool in the tin for 30 minutes before removing from the tin and letting cool completely on a wire rack. This is when it will go a bit wrinkly looking!
- When completely cool, stand the cake upside down, so what was the bottom is now the flat top, in a larger tin (I used a plastic tray) and using your cake skewer make lots of deep holes in the cake.
- Mix together the condensed milk, evaporated milk, cream, remaining 2 teaspoons of vanilla and rum.
- Ladle a small amount of the milk mix over the cake and leave to absorb. Continue doing this periodically until all is absorbed. This may take several hours.
- Put the now soggy cake into the fridge overnight to let the liquid settle in the cake and mellow.
- The day you want to serve the cake, make the meringue topping.
- Put the sugar with 80ml water into a small saucepan over a high heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved.
- Let the sugar syrup boil until it reaches ‘softball stage’. What this means is a temperature of 240°F or 120°C. If you don’t have a sugar thermometer, boil for about 8 minutes and then take a tiny amount of the syrup and drop into a bowl of cool water. The sugar should form a small soft lump.
- While that’s happening, whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form.
- Slowly add the sugar syrup to the egg whites and continue whisking while doing so.
- Continue to whisk until the mixture is thick and cool to the touch. This took me at least ten minutes. The hot sugar has cooked the egg white resulting in soft meringue.
- Spread the meringue over the top and sides of the cake with a spatula dipped in hot water. This will increase the ease of spreading.
- Refrigerate the cake uncovered until needed.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.